Continuity/Rupture: Art and Architecture in Central Europe 1918-1939

Tag: national identity

Our artwork of the month – the first instalment in this new series – is not from the interwar period: it was created in 2008-2009. It has been chosen as an introductory piece because it represents an important aspect of our research in a thought-provoking way. Our project considers Central Europe after 1918 as a shared cultural space, but in doing so it has to deal with the political reality: the newly minted nation states of the region and the new borders drawn between them. These borders – either their enforcement, or, as in the case of Hungary, their fervent contestation – were central to political discourse in all of these countries. The concept of the nation state relies on the idea that the ethnic, cultural and administrative borders of a nation should correspond with each other; this is, however, rarely the case in reality. The new states of Central Europe were not homogeneous either ethnically or culturally. In the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, different ethnic groups had not only lived side by side, but also intermingled. After 1918 the population of the region underwent a radical mental shift from imperial multi-nationalism towards ethnic nationalism. Yet, multi-ethnicity was still present, and cultural transfer happened between ethnicities and across borders. What does this curious map tell us about all this? Let’s take a look.

Following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the brand new state of Czechoslovakia was founded on 28 October 1918. Unifying several provinces with no previous historic connections – Bohemia, Moravia, Czech-speaking Silesia, Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia -, it was a multiethnic state that nevertheless sought to construct a single, encompassing national identity for its citizens. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary, Dr Marta Filipová, a member of the CRAACE team, has written an article about the complex identity politics of Czechoslovakia for the University of Birmingham website. Read it here.

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